When one wants to create a chatbot for their business, they have choose between the 3 options: platforms to build a chatbot, buy a ready-made solution or hire a specialist for building a custom chatbot. Some may think over the first two, as they offer quick-and-easy way to get a chatbot.

But is either of them a good option?

YOU ARE ALONE WITH COMPLEXITIES AND PITFALLS

If you are thinking about adopting a chatbot, probably you have already formed a certain vision of its role for your business. Maybe it’s for the sake of customer service improvement, or creating another distribution channel, or both at a time. Or even for more tasks.

Would you be able you elicit all the necessary requirements? Do you want to realize the functional product specification? Are you ready to overcome pitfalls and difficulties that might (and certainly would!) arise during development?

Probably not.

Hand it all over to an experienced Business Analyst is a great relief for those, who is unwilling to deal with all the tech background. Such a professional would take care not only of the technical side of the question, but also of aligning the chatbot with your business needs.

Business Analyst is your support that would take over all the difficulties and lead you toward the happy future.

YOU’VE CREATED A CHATBOT. WHAT’S NEXT?

Any business has its unique peculiarities. Some companies have a rare CRM or ERP system, others – unique business processes that are extremely difficult to integrate with information systems. Does your chatbot developing strategy envisage an integration step?

Integration stage represents a major challenge in software projects. It’s complicated to integrate even box solutions, not to mention hand-written software.

Turning to a developer for integrating such things would turn out to be extremely expensive.

Thus, you’ll be compelled either to spend extra money on integration and support, or tolerate the missed opportunity of automation between your systems.

Box chatbot won’t bring you many benefits if it’s not integrated with your current CRM and ERP systems.

Customized products, in their turn, are designed with the integration step in mind. Choosing this option means that you’ll have everything configured and integrated with YOUR systems, so that you would not have to overpay in the long term.

PROBLEMS IN A LONG-WAY PERSPECTIVE

We live in a very fast-changing world. Companies must be able to adapt for the coming days, and for this they need flexible and robust tools at their disposal.

Modern Do-It-Yourself platforms allow to easily create a chatbot with drag-and-drop interface. That sounds so appealing!

But typically, they offer to address only to one of your needs. Every open chatbot development platform has their limitations: the limited number of monthly API requests in case of remote data processing, limit on capacities for data processing. Sooner or later, a company faces the situation where it desires something that the platform just could not offer.

At that point of time, a company has two options:

Transition to another, more advanced platform

This option leads to overspending, as AI would must be taught from scratch again.

Leaving the things as they are, giving up the idea of functional elaboration

The second option leads to the fact that you begin to lag behind competitors in the quality of services provided and, in the end, lose market share.

Chatbots proposed by platforms are constrained to a certain level. And they could not develop beyond it..

These problems could have been avoided if the chatbot were in your possession. That would allow for monitoring the level of its development, the quality of the code, and everything that it does. Making adjustments to a chatbot’s behavior and clearly understanding the code under the hood.

PRICE FOR A CUSTOMIZED CHATBOT DEMYSTIFIED

The intent to cut costs is inherent and understandable.

But we urge you to think ahead about the issues that can spring up. Otherwise, you can easily end up having spend more for subsequent refinement. If you do not want to overpay for re-engineering or serious improvements in the future, think over developing a personalized solution.

OUR VERDICT:

Building a chatbot on a platform may be a good experiment. It can serve well, to a certain point of time and development. But when it’s time to grow, there appears many obstacles one wouldn’t have been able to notice before.

Delegate all the chatbot concerns to AI experts from the very start, and this won’t happen to you.

If you’re planning to use your chatbot as an effective tool, building a customized chatbot would be the most reasonable choice. A team of AI professionals could make an intelligent chatbot that would fit like a glove to your business.

Need a chatbot specialist? Call us at +1 201 464 6906 or fill out the form below for a free consultation.

Since 2001 we design and develop software for clients in a diverse set of industries including entertainment, education, finance, insurance, medical services and biotechnology. We offer consulting services for startup projects and focus on close collaboration with our clients. By using series of short development cycles, we facilitate transparency to the development process and help ideas mature and evolve in the right direction over time.